I hope everyone had as great of a Thanksgiving holiday as I did. Spending time with my family is my very favorite thing to do. Even better than shop time. We ate a lot of turkey, scarfed down 10 whole pies, and spent a few days visiting and reminiscing together. I did manage to sneak out to the shop before the festivities began to work on the two Pride knives. Here's what I was able to get done.
In this photo, the handles have been ground and polished up to 2000 grit and buffed with pink scratchless compound on the buffer. Look at how that pearl shines! The carbon fiber looks amazing in its own right too. You can definitely see the difference in the bolster materials. The 416 bolsters on the bottom knife really take a nice mirror finish, while the zirconium bolsters on the top knife still look a little cloudy.
I debated about keeping the mirror finish on the 416 bolsters for the pearl knife, but ultimately went with a 2000 grit satin finish. I think this will break up the transition from the polished mother of pearl to the Damasteel blade rather nicely.
The zirconium bolsters were heat anodized to this smokey charcoal color. Love it! The pics don't capture this very well, but they look great in person.
Since I had the torch out, I went ahead and heat anodized the stainless screws for the darker knife. This bronze color should match the scales once the titanium is anodized to a bronze color too. The screws also look great with the colored zirconium bolsters.
The handles are almost complete now. I still need to do some filework on the pearl knife and anodize the liners. The lock faces on the liners need to be carbidized too, but that has to wait until after anodizing. After that, it's on to the blades. Thanks for following along with me on this build. I hope you check back soon.
- Brandant Robinson